Calle de José Ortega y Gasset

In 1871, as the Ensanche that Carlos María de Castro had planned in the city’s northeast grew, a new street between the Paseo de la Castellana and today’s Calle de Francisco Silvela was named Lista. It honoured Alberto Rodríguez de Lista, priest and neoclassical poet who founded Madrid’s Colegio de San Mateo in 1821. So it remained for over eighty years, until death changed the plaque. José Ortega y Gasset died in Madrid on 18 October 1955, and ten days later the City Council agreed to rename Lista after the philosopher, author of The Revolt of the Masses (1930) and founder of the Revista de Occidente. And yet the old name refused to die. Beneath the asphalt, the line 4 metro station still keeps the word Lista, and Madrileños still use it to find their way.